With all the BILLION$ of dollars M$ has they can't even pony up the money for Sound Forge? Good god. If I was still running a pirated copy of windows I'd feel very vindicated.. but now I run a mac so..

I think you miss his point. Yes, pirating Windows is wrong and illegal, even if Microsoft uses pirated software. That's because "hypocricy" doesn't have legal standing. But it does have standing in the realm of public opinion. Nobody would particularly cry for MS if they claim that they're loosing money to piracy. (Not that anyone would cry for MS now, we just cry because of MS.) It's a credibility thing. There's a difference between doing something that's wrong and feeling bad about it.

Personally, I hope it makes the "powers that be" realize that piracy by private corporations for profit is more harmful than piracy for personal use at home.

Yes, but so does "of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession" (Lev. 25:45). Yup, you have a biblical right to enslave tourists' children. Or, in other words - not everything the Old Testament says is suitable as a handbook of modern morality.

More to the point, blanket statements like "thou shalt not steal" are only meaningful if you define "steal". Let's not have the whole "is copyright infringement theft" flamewar again, please - just please acknowledge that even among people who do consider copyright infringement to be theft, most people would at least consider the possibility that purchasing one copy of Windows and installing it on two computers is not exactly in the same (im)moral league as bank robbery.

In addition, what you fail to realize is that Microsoft still has every right to tell you what you are and are not allowed to do with their software. This right is not magically forfeited because of any illicit behavior on their part. Though specific rights in specific circumstances may warrant legal removal of certain rights to certain things they own - such as the application in question in this example - there is certainly no sweeping removal that would justify your illicit behavior. That's why remedies exist for this sort of behavior - to punish people. Part of that punishment does not involve removing the rights they retain on their property.

You still fail to see the real point, the one that causes people to hate companies like Microsoft and even politics. It isn't about one mistake, but the image the company/person puts out and what really goes on. It is about the agenda behind the person/company and the actions taken over time. Nothing wrong with second chance, but why give criminals enough room to make another more costly one. You can now argue to me the image of Microsoft you have, but that simply doesn't stick to the facts. Hypocrisy is a big problem. Not just because it happens, but because we tolerate it. Imagine any person you have trust in, now imagine that person now lying to you on a frequent basis. Would you then later trust this person with your life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The DEA doesn't tolerate personal drug use, but we tolerate criminal behavior in our corporations and government? Now I don't mean that all people do, but that this is what you do not see, and so you are one of the tolerating ones. You wouldn't care to defend the rights of another individual, but somehow have all the words to defend a corporation of which you really no little about.You then went on the attack, claiming all the beautiful rights that corporations throw around in the court room. Your the one failing to realize something. It is that people are rebelling based on moral reasons as much as they are on financial ones. It is no accident that Microsoft has such large sums of money. This is NOT success we should be proud of. It means the economy is inefficient, noncompetitive, and has the ability to create various problems such as social ones. You may not understand this, but some do. I could go on. Instead I will say one last thing, consider the possibility your wrong about what others have convinced you is right. Just because it is on paper, does not make it right. We should follow the law, but understand that we need to fight laws as often as the corporations do to create more innovative ones.

Has it occurred to anyone else that Microsoft quite likely owns enough licenses for this application, but the developer who needed it for Media Player knew he could get his work done faster by using an invalid license than going through the corporate bureaucracy.

"The law an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."Mohandas Gandhi

The implication is that everyone has committed some offense against some other person in his or her lifetime. If the only form of justice available were retribution, then the entire population of the world would be savaged. Imagine the torments you would have to undergo if every single wrong you have ever done in your life had to be repaid in kind.

I believe another famous religious leader had something similar to say about the idea of justice as retribution:

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. John, 8:7.

Justice as retribution is only ever advocated by hypocrites, because all of us have committed offenses against others.

With all the BILLION$ of dollars M$ has they can't even pony up the money for Sound Forge?

Have you tried getting management to buy the software required for a project? At times it's damn near impossible. You have a deadline and your request is moving at the speed of bureaucracy. Finally you say *fuck it* and get the damn software. This becomes a vicious circle when management asks, "Oh you didn't need us to buy this software before why do you need it now? Just do what you did before."

I'm not saying this is good or bad, this is just the way it happens. Management holds no accountability because it's their job to be a dumb ass. Being a dumb ass isn't illegal and saves the company money. They didn't pirate the software, some peon did.

I agree. Also, with the ubiquity of "fat clients", often times developers don't even bother to ask - they "demo" software long before they buy it.

It's easy to blame it on the managers, but the developers don't help by inflating the problem, promoting the piracy of software where an actual demo would have been more fruitful.

Dev: "Hey, I signed up for a demo of this. I put your email address in the form."Manager: "Ok."(2 weeks later)Dev: "I need this whiz-bang feature that the demo doesn't support. I won't be able to continue until I get it working."Manager: "Write up a PO and put it on my desk."

Often times, that'll get you software by the end of the week. It's worked for me many times... Where as the alternative (which I have done), normally gets the response, "we already have it, why do we need to buy it?".

The situation: Deadline for $500,000 contract in two days. Really hard to find memory leak in the code (only happens when there's >5 simultaneous users so you can't single step it). 3 developers had spend the last week trying to find it.

We'd put in a request for Developer Studio the previous month - the request had to be a 10 page report on why we needed it (heck, it's only $1000!).

I went to the manager. Stated that there was no way we could beat the deadline without some software to help us (it would be hard even with DS, but impossible without it). His response... "There's no money for it. Can't you pirate it?"

Penalties for missing the contract deadline by over a week amounted to over $10,000.

The answer to that would be: No, I am not empowered to agree to contracts on behalf of the company, and thus I really don't feel empowered to agree to them and violate them at the same time!

Why don't you pirate it, Mr. Manager Man?

Don't put up with violating the law, or even violating company policy, to get around stupid-ass restrictions that are keeping you from doing your job. Stand firm and complain continually about the policy failure. If your company has a process to make suggestions or complain about policies, use it exactly how you're supposed to. When asked why you don't hit deadlines, pull out documentation of how this policy hindered you and you couldn't get it changed.

We, the workers, need to stop putting up with this crap. Either they give us the tools to do our job (Or let us go get them.), or we're just going to stand there and point out they've hired us to do a job and not given us the tools. Don't go and get the tools in violation of company policy.

A friend of mine got in a similiar sitution recently. It seems, he's on the IT staff of a company, and they'd adding computers. Well, for some completely idiotic reason, the electricians wire the network. So he put in a work order for eight drops in this room, and, three weeks later, when they came in, only two of the drops actually worked. So he's talking about what he's going to do, is is he going to get a hub and have reduced bandwidth to this important machines, or maybe stick some of them in another room until another work order goes this, or maybe, against the rules, take off the faceplates of the jacks and try to fix the wiring, or what, and I just stare at him.

Then I say: The electricians didn't do their job. They probably don't know how to do it correctly, so it's not their fault, it's the fault of whoever put in such a stupid-ass rule, but still...the work order is not complete. Don't try to figure out a way around the rules. Go and tell them you're only able to do 1/4th your job, because only 1/4th of the work you need done (And was okayed to be done!) was actually done. If they want this to not happen again, they could actually let people who know how to wire a network cable run it, or at least put the ends on.

Because figuring out ways around the rules is not your job. If the rules are not correct, yes, you need to point that out, and maybe even suggest new rules. If management does not listen to you, it is not your job to do your work in violation of said rules. If they make you sweep with a shovel instead of a broom, by God, sweep with a shovel. Don't sneak a broom out when they aren't looking.

Of course, companies could actually start trusting workers again, and I'm sure some do. But if they did, you'd know, because you wouldn't have stupid procedures you need to work around in the first place!

A couple days later they showed up in person to demand, with absolutely no diplomacy (like asking politely), that I remove my own personal keyboard (one of them old clunky IBMs because modern keyboards suck) because it was against company policy to modify hardware.

I thought this was crazy until you revealed that this was a defense contractor. They have good reasons (government paranoia) to forbid unauthorized hardware and software installs. I used to work at a company whose only customer was Lockheed Martin and which was in fact formed by Lockheed Martin. (They form little companies for themselves like this so they can pay crappy wages with no benefits for doing work that doesn't require a classification. The concept of a company with a single customer comes quite naturally to these people.) When I did work in the actual Lockheed Martin facility I had an escort badge. Every time I needed to take a piss, they walked me down the hall and waited outside the bathroom.

I'm surprised you didn't get fired for plugging in a weird keyboard. They canned me for opening a telnet session one day and sending an email home saying I'd be late.

Technically, under the law, they ARE a singular entity. That's the entire idea behind a corporation: the company is a seperate entity, and if any part of the entity breaks the law, the entity as a whole can be sued for it. It allows for individuals to evade financial consequences if their company is held responsible for something.

For instance, let's say I start a company, and that company's product ends up causing a lot of accidental deaths. Instead of the individuals that compose the company being sued, the company itself is sued, and money can't be taken from the individuals...just the company. It lowers the risk of starting a business by making sure that only the business itself can be financially destroyed, not the individuals behind it.

However, on the same token, every employee of Microsoft is a representative of Microsoft as a corporation. "Some dude who worked at Microsoft" who used a cracked copy of Sound Forge is a representative of the company, and by breaking the law, the entity of Microsoft as a corporation is responsible for breaking the law.

Yes, Microsoft is liable and will have to pay Sony (if their employee was the one responsible). However having an employee do something they shouldn't is VERY different from willful infringement.

The problem is people seem to be blaming Microsoft as though they willfuly ripped off Sonic Foundry (now Sony) to save some money. Please, Sound Forge is like $250, it's nothing to them. More likely, whoever was responsible for it, maybe not even an MS employee (they may have contracted this out) just liked SF and used it instead of whatever app they had licensed.

Still their responsibility to pay for it, but don't pretend it was them being evil. They don't monitor the every move of their employees.

Interesting counter question: How many OSS Windows apps are compiled using a warezed version of Visual Studio?

Nobody has to use a Warezed version of Visual Studio. Between the.NET SDK, and the Visual C++ 7.1 Toolkit, and the PlatformSDK, you can download all the tools you need to build (including the optimizing C compiler) for free.

Even if you have a legal copy of Visual Studio you should be doing your automated build process with the free tools anyway.

Between the.NET SDK, and the Visual C++ 7.1 Toolkit, and the PlatformSDK, you can download all the tools you need to build (including the optimizing C compiler) for free.

Yep, you can do that. But then you'll spend so much trying find a usable set of runtime libraries in that mishmash, and then figuring out whether you're actually licensed to redistribute them, you'll end up wishing you hadn't. (Each of the SDKs is cleverly packaged with different incompatible and irregular subsets of the Windows runtime libraries, just to make it so hard to figure out that you'll run out and buy their non-free development tools out of frustration.)

Plus, if you use any outside code at all, it will almost invariably assume that you have the MS IDE environment to build it. You're then faced with rewriting the build process for that code from scratch.

. However having an employee do something they shouldn't is VERY different from willful infringement.

Yes; but the BSA, which is dominated by Microsoft, has no sympathy for that argument when a company is "audited" and found to be in violation of its licenses, when it's quite plausible that he company merely is poor at record keeping and most likely has actually paid for the licences; or left unused copies of software installed on machines when swapping hardware around, and so on. They still get the whole cavity search, perp walk and massive fine (or compulsory purchase to avoid such) treatment.

Oh, I just got a warm fuzzy at imagining Microsoft having to submit to a BSA audit. After all, if they think it's good for us, isn't it good for them?

I hope you enjoyed that fuzzy moment. I bet the audit would go something like this:

(office phone rings)Microsoft Legal Wank: Microsoft Legal.BSA Wank: Hi I'm Mr. Wank of the BSA and I'm conducting an audit of your software licensing. Do you have any known violations?MLW: Hold on a sec (hold music)BSAW:...MLW: Bill says no.BSAW: Fine. I'll write it all up in a report. Thanks for your compliance.

No, but they are responsible for the actions of their employees. And they should be held to be.

Just imagine a small company where some guy runs a illegal copy of Windows XP. Sure they would be sued or threatened with it to pay the license fee plus something. Same procedure should be applied to MS.

Oh fer christ sakes quit being so melodramatic; the case was about a hashing patent [that stac bought]. Essentially Stac claimed to own any algorithm that looks up matches in LZ compression in O(1) time and won on that basis. The code was not the same or even similiar, in fact, totally different algorithms, only similarity was run-time efficiency.

Optimist's response: Maybe they were waiting for their activation code. Pessimist's response: They knowingly stole it. Realist's response: Even Microsoft has no use for MS Sound Editor.

The question it rasises is how much other stuff is in windows that has IP violations? The answer is: Nobody knows. Probably not even MS know, and a nobody else is in a position to analyse it. By the time it gets found and publicised, its been in the operating system for a long time.

I am NOT an MS apologist but they were saying that the wav files shipped with windows media player were created and/or edited at some point with a warezed copy of sound forge. Not that warezed compiled code was shipped with windows...

ie; (no pun intended) this is like them compiling windows with a warezed version of Borland's compiler, not like distributing Borland's compiler.

Then later on, we found out that Ms. Rosen's son had hundreds of BetaMax copies of video rentals in her home.

It is not outrageous, because her son infringed on copyrights. It is outrageous that Ms. Rosen holds some unknown kid to some higher standard than her own son. It would show that the copyright is not what she cared about, only suing 13 year-olds for thousands.

Try taking a hex editor that can examine your hard drive surface directly, and searching for common english 'four letter' words. Usually, you run across a few comment blocks that read "I forget what the **** this does, I was drunk when I coded it", and so on, and several screeds from crackers about how information wants to be free, except for their real address. For some reason, most of the Phrozen Krew types out there can't resist a little profanity in their comments.

It's ok, though, because Microsoft has indemnified everybody (except embedded Windows users), so just be happy this didn't happen in some terrible operating system without a big, strong, virile company like Micorsoft backing it...

Are you kidding? I want homeland security on the case ASAP [go.com]. I also want BSA to send threatening letters to all Microsoft departments and offices and force them to audit their licensed software and code copyrights - or else they'll break down the doors with the assistance of Secret Service [msn.com] and seize all their assets! You know, irresponsible IP thieves and pirates like these are the criminals that are forcing software industry to lose $50.7 trillion (or whatever number it is) per year.

Actually, that's pretty standard for a German->English machine translation; the syntax of their sentences is slightly different than ours. If you really want to read some Yoda-speak, pick a Polish or Russian page....or if you want to hear it just go to The Molvanian Entry into Eurosong Contest [molvania.com.au].

So when does it stop being 'opinion' that big companies don't give a shit about anyone else's "IP rights".

We bash MS, and get MS defenders countering with idiocy that makes it seem like it's all a battle of opinion over whether MS is a big bad company or simply misunderstood, or whether MS is a monopoly, or just highly talented, whether MS doesn't give a shit about IP rights while enforcing their own or they're just working within a business realm that they need to survive.

Sorry, It just keeps going on and on like this. MS using pirated software to develop & promote their media player. Indefensible from a company that professes to rely so much on IP, unless they're nothing but greedy hypocrites.

It may well have been one impatient user. There's at least one in every company I've ever been at. Usually we just chuckle at them behind their backs and do what we can to make sure proper licensing procedures are followed (including changing admin passwords where necessary and hoarding new software behind locked doors) when there's no one willing to fire the person. The company ends up paying for the software in most cases as it's supposed to, but if an audit were ever done, a few software keys wouldn't quite match up even though the counts would be roughly correct.

There is no difference. Repeat after the BSA. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Your joe schmuck employees == your corporate managment == your entire company.

When it's Microsoft's precious "IP" in question, there are no excuses. This is not speculation, this is not opinion, this is a trail of tears weaving back and forth across the country with literally thousands and thousands of people and business, big and small, who lost a few of their holograms, that can vouch.

When Microsoft has its pet army of jackbooted thugs (the BSA) "auditing" the daylights out of you (or your elementary school, or your police station, or your old folks home) they don't buy this excuse. It doesn't matter if you bought those 5 computers used and the seller didn't give you the stickers. It doesn't matter if some 2 week contractor who didn't even speak English warezed Office _and_ stole a box of white out, it's still your business' problem, guilty until proven innocent, "Civil and Criminal Penalties," $500,000 for each count, etc etc... You're still staring down the barrel of a devastating lawsuit or a "relicensing" on extremely favorable terms...

So yes, duh, absoloutely PLEASE run off and for the record we are not nearly bitter or self-righteous enough.

Ok. Next time your company gets audited by the BSA(another beast we can thank MS for), and they find one or two pirated copies of software, that employees installed without authorization, and use that as justification to charge you for the audit, to the tune of several millions of dollars, remember what you just said today.

Already times on the idea come, one with Windows XP installed WAV file with the editor to open? That makes nevertheless nobody - Microsoft will have imagined, nevertheless innumerable WAV files on the computer and those lie are to to listen to and to do not look at there.

Off-topic me all you want, but what's the point of providing a Google translation of these things. It's like posting an article and expecting no one to RTFA.

According to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple: "The most common format of audio files on an windows system is 'warezed'." He appears convinced Apple will lead the way in Digital Rights Management and also believes Apple will steal a march on Microsoft in making the digital home a reality because Microsoft "doesn't have the volumes". "There is no way that you can get there with Microsoft. The critical mass has to come from the iPod, or a next-generation video device"

Just for kicks, do a content search on all *.wav files on your drive, searching for the string 'deepz0ne'.

You may run across more hits. That doesn't necessarily mean that the author of the software they came with used a cracked copy of SoundForge.

For example, the Digital Eel game "Dr. Blob's Organism" demo has the deepz0ne string in "powerdn.wav", but doesn't have it in any of the others. That makes me think they probably just grabbed a sound effect off of a (presumably) royalty-free sound effects library (CD/DVD/online), and that particular sound effect happened to be authored or modified in a warez version of SoundForge.

Similarly the mediaplayer sounds... whose are they, really ? Were they authored/modified by an MS Employee ? If not - where does MS's responsibility come in ? Do -you- check every asset you acquire in good faith belief to see if they may have been touched by a cracked piece of software ?

Good point except for the fact tha MS is supposed to check. They are the ones that are being high and mighty on the subject. Remember that MS has leagues of lawyers both checking and enforcing IP and using any resources within their power to enforce. This is a big egg-on-face fiasco. I don't double check royalty-free stuff but I am not distibuting software in the same scale as MS nor have the same resources and rightuous indignation.

The guy who started Sonic Foundry and was the original writer of the SoundForge program got his start at Microsoft. A lot of his work for MS wound up in the multimedia code for Windows 3.11 and Windows95.

Fine way to thank him, MS. I hope Sony takes MS to the cleaners over this.

That senator who said physical damage should occur to anyone's computer that had illegal software/music/movies on it? And does anyone remember when they found some JavaScript on his site that was used without permission?

Does this mean that every file I've created with my (legal) copy of Sound Forge, registered to me, gets distributed with my name embedded in it? What other programs do this? I already know that MS Office docs do -- but I never suspected Sound Forge of something like this.

Software authors/distributors should be required to disclose exactly what personal information is distributed in files which are created with that product. As much as I like to stick it to M$, Sonic Foundry, now Sony, is the one I'm concerned about here.

News.com.com has reported today that Sonic Foundry auditors have decended on Redmond Washington like an army of cossaks searching for pirated copies of Sound Forge and checking that each computer has a valid liscence for any Sonic Foundry software present on the Microsoft campus.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying, "Well, we consider this a valid liscencse enforcement practice, so I guess we have to put up with it. We're just glad noone ran 'strings' on our TCP/IP stack for 'Regents of the University of California.'"

Who needs the linked JPG? Just go to the directory in question: $WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav , pick a WAV file, right click, choose Open With, and Pick Notepad. Scroll down to the last line and you can see the evidence for yourself.

It's a big deal because Microsoft, along with the BSA, comes down quite hard on companies where even nominal amounts of illegally licensed software are used. Those companies will now have the same defense that Microsoft currently has: Sometimes mistakes happen.

did you see the big monty python foot next to the headline there big fella?

hover over it with your pointer... go ahead, i'm waiting

see what the pop up text says?

it says "It's funny. laugh."

do you understand the fucking concept? do you really?

because i don't think you do

i assert to you that unfunny negative asocial "article appropriateness" trolls like yourself second guessing the editors can do, and are perhaps doing, more damage to slashdot than any editor with a trigger happy post button ever can

And how many times has Microsoft's lapdog BSA audited [itworld.com] some one, found a piece of Microsoft warez that some employee had pirated and fined the hell out of the company for it? That's what makes this newsworthy.

Why is it that you believe MS should be allowed to do this, but that they are allowed to fine or have imprisoned people who violate MS's rights?

MS stole code, they've done it before, and they're doing it now. Given how Ballmer likes to pretend he's some sort of champion of individual IP-holder's rights, he shouldn't have a problem making this "error" right.

Instead, it's more likely this will take a lawsuit.

What makes this newsworthy is the same thing that makes Limbaugh's drug use news. It's not so much that he's a druge addict (although there is a group of the public who likes public scandal), but it's that he condemns other drug users to jail, but demands leniency for himself.

If MS wants a pass on this, then they should lighten up, remove XP activation bullshit, whatever. Otherwise, to hell with them.

Sound Forge 4.5 isn't GPL software. Basically, someone in Microsoft used a pirated version of some sound-editing software to make a sound file for Windows XP, and the evidence of the piracy is in the metadata of the WAV file. It just proves that they pirated some proprietary software to make a sound file, not that they ripped off GNU source code and put it in Windows.

Along those lines, I was thinking that maybe the sound editing was outsourced. We all know that their photography is stock stuff; witness all the MS ads picturing Apples. It is conceivable, though not necessarily true, that this work was done by an outside agency.

That what you get when some jr. programmers make the adjunct software in a company where it takes forever to purchase anything!

It can't take that long to purchase anything at Micro$oft. Daniel Feussner [theinquirer.net] somehow managed to get nine million dollars worth of software purchased internally for his group which he then flogged on eBay. Of course Feussner later
died [nwsource.com] of ethylene glycol (antifreeze) poisoning so you have to wonder if the programmer who made this mistake will end up having the same thing happen to h

Not that your point about metadata isn't valid, but this isn't a typical metadata problem. The WAV format doesn't directly provide for strings indicating the program that created the audio. There is a "text" chunk in which you can put such information, but WAV files don't have to have such a chunk and they don't have any standard interpretation. Information about the file is usually placed before the audio data too. This stuff could be a text chunk placed at the end, but I suspect that it is actually included in the audio data chunk - a few odd sample values at the end will be undetectable to the ear. I can't tell for sure though without examining the WAV file, which I don't have since I don't have MS Windows.
Maybe somebody could post a link to one of the files and we could find out.